


the patron saint of silent restraint

by iceberry



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dean Winchester - Mentioned - Freeform, Developing Relationship, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Season/Series 11, Soulless Sam Winchester
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:47:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28464075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iceberry/pseuds/iceberry
Summary: What Sam finds in the doorway, crumpled and bleeding at the bottom of the stairs to the bunker door, is definitely worrying. “Worrying,” in fact, is a gross understatement.Because laying on the ground is Sam Winchester, unconscious and identical to the one standing in the doorway, save for a cut across his forehead and blood staining a flannel Sam has never owned.(Cas is still recovering from the after-effects of Rowena's spell. Dean is missing. Sam doesn't know where to start looking for him. Another Sam has appeared, one that's a little different, in a worryingly familiar way. And they might need him.)
Relationships: Castiel/Sam Winchester
Comments: 19
Kudos: 24





	1. shadow of a doubt

**Author's Note:**

> no archive warnings for this chapter, but violence may be added as the story goes on, and general content warning for extremely brief mentions of sam's addiction (that will also come up in future chapters). also dean Will show up but he is not going to be a main character in this at all, so you have been warned!
> 
> set ~3 weeks after 11x04

Castiel is gone when Sam wakes up. He’s not surprised or upset by the angel's absence from his bed—four out of five nights Cas spends in Sam's room, he doesn’t stay through the morning. He leaves the bed empty but the blankets on his side smoothed out with a careful touch, a detail that brings a smile to his face every time Sam notices it. He doesn’t know exactly how long Cas lays next to him when he spends the night, and he doesn’t care to ask; he never leaves before Sam has fallen asleep to the white-noise whisper of whatever TV show the angel puts on that night. Knowing that is more than enough for Sam. 

At some point he knows they should figure out whatever is going on between them, maybe actually talk about the way things have quietly shifted since Cas’s recovery from Rowena’s spell—the fact he’s spent enough nights in Sam’s room for there to be actual patterns, for one. Just not right now.

The point being: Cas’s absence that morning isn’t worrying.

The rest of the bunker is silent as Sam shuffles through his morning routine. There’s no footsteps outside his door as he brushes his teeth, no sign of Cas in the library as he cuts through to the kitchen, tablet in hand. The coffee maker is still quiet and cool when he places a mug beneath it, yesterday’s grounds still damp in the filter. Dean’s dirty glasses from the night before are still sitting in the sink, waiting on the promise his brother made that he would clean them before he went to bed. He sighs when he sees them, an exasperated exhale that turns into a yawn halfway through, and pours some dishsoap over them to let them soak while the coffee maker whirrs to life.

The dishes also aren’t worrying, just annoying. He’s almost always up and making breakfast before Dean, and he appreciates the hour or two of quiet to check his email, scan the headlines for cases. Or more recently, look for any sign of the Darkness. The news this morning, like all the mornings in the two months preceding it, doesn't turn up anything that screams "primordial being." There's something that _might_ be a werewolf in Southwest New Mexico, mention of a missing heart in an article that might be a real case if he squints at it just right, so he saves that to pore over later with Dean.

When he’s finished with his coffee and eggs, he does the dishes—his own and the ones left overnight, because he’s a _great_ brother—and goes to the front door, to peek outside and check the weather, to see if he’ll need a jacket for his morning run or if the sun’s been out long enough to warm up the air.

What he finds in the doorway, crumpled and bleeding at the bottom of the stairs to the bunker door, is definitely worrying. “Worrying,” in fact, is a gross understatement.

As it usually goes in their life, far too much happens all at once. It’s always been an impossible hope for crises to maybe space themselves out a bit more, but that doesn’t make it any better when Sam rushes back inside, straight down the room to Dean’s room, and finds it empty. He immediately thinks of other places to check, but the room being empty this early in the morning when he hasn’t seen Dean in the kitchen yet is a _bad_ sign, one his brain is already trying to sort through the implications of when he realizes that it'll have to wait until he takes care of the thing in the doorway. He doesn’t have time to find his brother right now, unless he happens to be around the corner as he runs back towards the crow’s nest.

“Cas!” he yells as he heads up the stairs, and mercifully, the angel appears in the doorway at the back of the library.

"Sam, what’s the matter?"

"It’s—” Sam starts, and then stops, because Cas is already halfway to the stairs, and then he’s following Sam up to the door, and it’s much easier to open the door and let the angel see it himself than try to explain the body.

Because laying on the ground is Sam Winchester, unconscious and identical to the one standing in the doorway, save for a cut across his forehead and blood staining a flannel Sam has never owned.

“It’s you,” Cas finishes the sentence and frowns.

◎

“Sam, it _is_ you,” Cas says, pulling the two fingers away from the man’s forehead, Sam’s gaze following the gesture closely, more as an excuse to look at Castiel instead of at… himself, handcuffed to a chair in the bunker’s dungeon. Cas meets his eyes, brow furrowed, looking even more confused than before. “Not _you_ , but—I didn’t look too deeply into his thoughts due to his state of unconsciousness, but he’s not a shifter. Not a demon. I couldn’t detect any disguise spells, either.”

Sam reaches for his left hand with his right, almost goes to press his thumb down on it, but settles for nervously running his finger along the raised line instead. It doesn’t hurt much these days anyways, no matter how hard he presses down on it. “Have you tried calling Dean again?” he asks, because while he’s grateful for Cas, he desperately wishes his brother was here to help deal with this. Sam still hasn’t let himself _really_ start to panic about Dean being missing because of the urgency involved in finding a doppelgänger unconscious on your doorstep, but his absence is becoming impossible to ignore as the morning goes on.

“Not since I first went to look,” Cas replies, hand still hovering a few inches away from the Other Sam, waiting for further direction. “Should I try his other phone again?” Sam pulls his own phone out, quickly scrolls through his own call history. He’s called and texted both of Dean’s phones several times, given Jody a heads-up that he might need more help later if worst comes to worst and gotten a promise back that she’ll do whatever she can, and left Crowley a threatening voicemail. There’s probably not too many options left on that front.

“Wake him up,” he decides after a second, and watches as Cas reaches back out to touch the man’s forehead again. There’s _nothing_ about this situation he likes, save for the fact that the Other Sam is restrained, and according to Cas, is just human. But the chance that Dean’s disappearance is completely unrelated to the appearance of another him on the doorstep is close to zero. If hunting has taught him anything, it’s that a true coincidence is rare.

The second Cas’s fingers press lightly against the man’s skin, he gasps, hazel-green eyes flying open, identical to the ones Sam had looked into while he brushed his teeth. Sam watches as eerily familiar expressions flit across his face; the Other Sam scans the room, and Sam can imagine the questions he’s asking himself while casing the space, drilled into his mind from years of practice and instinct.

“Where the fuck am I?” he says after a moment, his eyes fixing on Sam and narrowing. “What are you?” Besides the initial shock of coming back to his body, Sam is struck by how calm the man seems; there’s a practiced temperance to his reaction, despite being handcuffed to a chair in a dungeon he doesn’t seem to recognize.

“Where’s Dean?” Sam asks.

“Probably dead, fuck if I know,” the Other Sam says, and it’s such a collected, automatic response that it shocks Sam into silence for a second. In the interim, he turns to Cas, and with the faintest hint of surprise on his face, asks “You’re alive?”

"Yes," Cas responds, and a slight smile appears on the Other Sam's face, apparently amused by the deadpan delivery.

"Where are you from?" Sam asks, pressing on.

"Earth, Kansas. Are you a shifter?" The Other Sam asks, and Sam scrutinizes him for any sign of lying, or toying with them, and doesn’t find any. If he _is_ Sam, somehow, he’s a hunter, and Sam can offer him at least some assurance that he’s not tied up by monsters. Sam picks up the silver knife, holds it out for inspection, then cuts a thin line across his arm. It bleeds and doesn’t burn, and he holds the knife out for Castiel to do the same. The angel’s hand rests directly on Sam’s for a few seconds as he reaches for the knife, pausing before grabbing it to heal Sam’s cut with his other hand.

“See? Not shifters. I’ll get holy water too, if you want.”

“You don’t need to do that. I can smell your blood,” he says, as casually as if he’s talking about being able to see the color of Castiel’s coat or feel the handcuffs on his wrists. 

“What?”

“Oh,” the Other Sam replies, looking mildly confused himself. “You can’t? Not even when you’re off it?”

“Are you talking about being off _demon blood_?” Sam asks, nearly stumbling over the end of the sentence when it dawns on him; the discomfort he’s felt looking at himself from the outside-in shifts into something more like disgust. Whatever, whoever, the man sitting in front of them is, he’s a version of Sam that he’d thought he was no longer haunted by.

“What is the last thing you remember?” Castiel steps up towards the devil’s trap in the middle of the room, steps into the conversation.

"I got back to my motel after cleaning out a nest of vamps, opened the door, and fell down a set of stairs that weren’t there before. Hit my head.” He looks upward, like he’s trying to catch a glimpse of the cut on his forehead that’s still leaking blood into his eye. “And then I woke up handcuffed to a chair by a dead angel and... myself. God, am I really _still_ that gawky?” 

There’s something in the way the Other Sam says those particular words, in the way the look in his eyes is completely stripped of any warmth, that unlocks something from the dredges of Sam’s mind. _That can’t be_ , he thinks at first. And then, more to the point: _No fucking way._

“Cas,” Sam says. “Check for his soul.” Cas gives him a look, wary and warning, but rolls up a sleeve.

“No,” the Other Sam says, and there _is_ emotion in his voice now, but it’s a base, instinctual fear; it’s as animal and primal as Sam expected to hear, but it still stirs up pity in him that he isn’t sure what to do with. He can’t trust this Other Sam to tell the truth, if he even _knows_ , not when he’s appeared and Dean is missing. _"_ _No!”_ Sam pulls off his own belt and folds it in half, pries the Other Sam’s mouth open and places the leather between his teeth. He knows from experience it doesn’t really help, but it feels like the kind thing to do anyways.

Sam watches as Cas’s fist sinks into the Other Sam’s stomach, watches as streaks of red light boil beneath his skin, remembers the feeling of a hot poker being shoved through his torso and burning upwards through his throat. When Castiel pulls his arm out, his expression is severe; the Other Sam is unconscious, the belt falling out of his mouth gracelessly as he slumps over.

“It’s gone.”

◎

“Yeah, thanks, Jody. No, no, you’re right, it _could_ be Crowley but… it’s not really his style, you know? Tell Claire to be safe, but call if she hears anything. Thanks.” Sam hangs up and places the phone face-down on his desk, looks up to where Cas has been standing in the doorway for him to finish the call. “Jody has an APB out on Dean, and she's going to get in touch with some other hunters who might be able to get us somewhere.” 

“Good. Did you find anything else outside the bunker or in Dean’s room?"

Sam shakes his head. "The Impala is still there. There’s no signs of any intruders, the warding all held." He'd walked in circles around the bunker after leaving the Other Sam to recover, starting from the entrance and radiating outward; he’d spent the last two hours scouring the inside just as thoroughly. There’s no sign of a struggle, no sign that Dean packed up anything for a trip. His phones haven’t been answered because they’re still laying on his desk, his gun is still under his pillow. The gun was actually the final straw, Sam’s been on the verge of throwing up since he found it. Because even if Dean’s left again (and that memory is still raw enough to come to mind), he wouldn’t have left his Colt.

“What about... Is he awake?” Cas nods, and Sam runs his fingers through his hair, pushes it out of his face without really thinking about the gesture.

“He says that he doesn’t know how, but he feels a… pull, of sorts,” Cas says, and that does make Sam look up, turn his chair around from the desk. "He thinks it’s towards Dean."

“Towards _Dean_?” Sam repeats, incredulous. 

“That’s his best guess, anyways. It’s a new development, since arriving here, and he says it’s a pull towards a specific presence, like exorcising a demon in reverse.” _Exorcising a demon with his mind_ , Sam finishes silently.

“How much longer did you talk to him?”

“I took the liberties of continuing our line of questioning, since you were searching for Dean,” Cas says, and pauses before finally crossing the threshold into Sam’s room. “And because it seemed like speaking to him was difficult for you.” Sam doesn’t reply to that right away, frustrated that seven years since the demon blood and five since he walked the Earth without his soul he still couldn’t keep himself composed enough to make it through that conversation. And at the same time, grateful that Cas recognized it. Saw him.

“What do you think?” Sam asks as Cas sits on the edge of his bed. “Do you think he’s telling the truth?”

Cas tilts his head to the side, thinking. “I question what reason he would have to lie. I _could_ draw the knowledge out of him by force, but after already reaching for his soul, I would prefer not to put him through it. At least not today.”

“Cas," Sam starts, and he’s not even sure it's worth bringing up, still half-convinced that maybe Dean’s right, it’s just the after-effects of the rabid infection. But it’s _something_ , and right now that's more than the nothing they’re working with. "I’ve been having these… visions.” He settles on the word that he’s used with Dean, one that feels insufficient for the images and experiences that have been reverberating around his head since he sat in the hospital chapel, the Darkness burning through his veins. “After I prayed to God.”

Sam is grateful that Cas disguises any surprise he might have at that. “The first was right after the Darkness was released, and I saw the Cage. And then on the way to that nachzherer case—I saw my dad, except it _wasn’t_ my dad, just someone pretending to be, and he told me we were the only ones who could stop the Darkness.”

“And you’re wondering if our mysterious visitor is another one of these visions?” Cas says, voice cautious, but not suspicious, not immediately questioning if what Sam had felt was real like Dean had. 

“I mean, the fact that you can see him too rules out the vision option,” Sam concedes. “But sign, maybe? I don’t know, none of it makes sense, right? If it is God, why would taking Dean away help us with the Darkness?"

"Could it _be_ the Darkness?" Cas asks, eyes following Sam as he gets up from his desk and begins unbuttoning his flannel, still stiff in patches from the Other Sam's blood. He pulls it off, stripped down to just a white undershirt with much fainter bloodstains, and throws it into his laundry basket before sitting down next to Cas. The bed sinks beneath him, and he feels the angel's shoulder brush his own as the two of them settle into the mattress. Neither one of them pulls away. “As opposed to God.”

"Maybe, but… I know I have nothing to support this, but I don’t think it is," Sam says. "And I also… I don’t know, for some reason… I don’t think Dean is dead. Maybe that’s just me being optimistic, maybe it’s stupid, but I just have this _feeling_ , you know? Like deep down, that things are going to be alright. And I know I shouldn’t trust in this, it might be a trap of some king, but if this other me says he might be able to help, maybe he actually can—”

“Sam,” Cas says, placing a hand on Sam’s arm; it’s only then, under his touch, that Sam realizes he’s shaking a bit. “I trust you.”

Sam’s mouth suddenly feels dry. “Thanks, Cas,” he says, and Castiel pulls his hand away and stands up. “Then I think we should follow his pull. Unless something else comes up." Sam starts to push himself off the bed, following Cas's lead, but sits back down when the angel shakes his head.

“I will observe him through the night,” Cas says. “It’s late, and I would prefer to keep him under careful observation for a bit longer before getting in a car with him and trusting his direction.”

“Are you sure you feel up to it?” Sam asks, and for the first time that day, really looks at Cas. The angel has been getting better incrementally, less jumpy with each day spent resting in the bunker. He does still seem tired (for a being that doesn’t need sleep), but he’s no longer flinching when he passes a mirror, emerging into the main spaces of the bunker from the quiet corners of Sam’s room and the archives more frequently.”

“Yes. I will be fine. Try and get some sleep.” Sam nods, knowing damn well that he’s just going to stare at the ceiling for a few hours before he can’t stand it anymore and starts drafting more texts to send, cleaning his gun and packing the Impala so they can leave before the sun even rises. Cas leaves quietly, and Sam watches the doorway until he’s far enough away that not even the echoes of his footsteps through the hall make it back to Sam’s room.

He _almost_ asks Cas to wait and stay with him, instead. Almost.


	2. constant conversation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> sam, cas, and the other sam set off.

"I'll cooperate if you take off my handcuffs."

"You don’t have a choice," Sam says. "You help us, or you stay here."

"Bullshit. I'm your only lead. Take off my handcuffs."

Sam glances at Cas, searching for agreement or commiseration, and pulls the key out of his pocket without really waiting for or receiving either.

“If you so much as raise a finger against one of us,” Castiel begins, but he’s cut off by a hollow laugh from the other Sam, stretching his arms up and out and folding them behind his head, luxuriating in the return of his freedom of movement.

"You’ll what?” he asks, challenging the angel, and Sam moves to step between the two of them. Another look at Castiel confirms his suspicions, that the angel wasn’t all that close to taking the bait, but he’s not in the mood to deal with anything other than directions to Dean, and he’s not going to leave any openings for the situation to escalate.

“Okay, enough.” Sam ignores the dual glares directed towards him: one cold, one frustrated, both less important than getting on the road and finding his brother. "Where do we need to go?"

“We have to go West,” Other Sam says, rubbing his wrists. “And then North, but go West first.”

So they get in the Impala and head West. 

The Other Sam, the one that he’s been thinking of reproachfully as _Husk_ , an empty replica of who he is, is quiet besides the occasional complaint about not being provided a bed the night before. (The complaints are despite admitting he doesn’t sleep and Cas replacing his restraints in the dungeon chair with a pair of normal warded handcuffs and free reign around the room.) Sam keeps one eye on him and the other on the road as they speed down two-lane highways towards I-70, mostly because he doesn't know if the quiet should be cause for concern. Even in a single day spent around him, he’s gathered that this isn’t the soulless man that Sam has a year’s worth of memories of being, and that’s somehow even more discomforting.

For one, this Sam hasn’t been flung out of 2011, 27 years old (physically, at least) and freshly free of the Cage and that pesky soul, with all the brand-new memories of hell that went along with his return to earth. He’s the same age as the real Sam, 32, and when Sam asks what he remembers—and the implication is hell, it’s _always_ hell—he answers like the memories are so old and distant as to be irrelevant. He also looks at the hunter and angel like they’re idiots when they ask him what year it is: he says it’s 2015, which they can’t really argue with. 

Secondly, what follows ‘this Sam isn’t from a different time’ semi-logically, or at least what passes for logic in their lives, is ‘he’s from a different world.’ Alright, maybe it _is_ a leap logically, but it’s the conclusion that Castiel came to while talking to him more overnight in the dungeon, and has accepted with nothing more than a puzzled calm. Sam, however, hasn't quite been able to make sense of it on a conceptual level, let alone a _practical_ one. The Other Sam, the Husk, claims ignorance of how he got here, but is shockingly amenable to Castiel’s theory of world-hopping, and at the moment, Sam can’t really think of any convincing alternatives, so he lets his mind wander through the possibilities. It’s not completely inconceivable that the Other Sam sent himself here accidentally or is just missing memories, but the most probable answer is also the one that raises several other worrying questions: someone sent him here.

But mostly, he’s quiet.

◎

“We need to stop soon,” the Husk says when they’re about 4 hours west of Lebanon, getting close to the Colorado border, and Sam glances into the rearview mirror. His voice is still cold and steady, but Sam is surprised to see sweat beading on his forehead, hair sticking to his pallid skin. _I know that look_ , Sam thinks, and immediately wants to kick himself for not realizing that it was coming.

“What’s wrong?” Castiel asks, turning around to speak to him, leaning an arm on the back of the front seat.

“Withdrawal,” he replies, and there’s a new strain to his voice that wasn’t there before, not even under the duress of Cas checking his soul. Sam sets his jaw and stares out at the road, knuckles gripping the wheel a little tighter, a rush of anxiety crawling across his skin as the memories of coming off the blood—being _forced_ off it—flood back.

“We don’t have any demon blood,” Castiel says, and though Sam can feel the angel looking at him, their resident expert on the subject, for advice, he continues to stare forward and ignore everything except the road and the occasional snowflake or two. _Get it together_ , he repeats to himself, and Cas and Husk’s voices begin to sound distant as blood rushes to his ears. 

“That’s why we need to stop and get me some, jackass,” the Other Sam says. _Get it together, get it together_. Fighting off panic isn't new to Sam, but his defenses are down right now, he’s on edge without knowing where Dean is, if he’s alive or dead. The memories of withdrawal are deep, not so much festering, open wounds as thrice-healed scar tissue that he can’t stop his mind from tearing open again when he sees the poorly disguised pain on the Other Sam’s face. _I should have known, should have seen this coming, but you need to get it together._

“And how do you propose we do that?”

“Summon a demon, take a pint from the first person it possesses. Bottle some for the road. Don’t even have to kill them. Exorcise them. Easy.”

“Absolutely not.” _Get it together, Sam_. “That is unconscionable.”

“Alright, get ready to hunker down then, because it’s going to take me a month to get it out of my system, if it doesn’t _permanently_ cripple me going from a gallon a day to nothing.”

“A _gallon_?” 

“I’d guess I have about, hm, 14 hours maximum before my powers start going haywire, and then I won’t be a help to anyone. Not to you, not to either of me, not to _poor_ , missing, Dean—”

“Okay,” Sam says suddenly, shifts lanes fast enough that Cas is jostled a bit. The tempo of his voice is as jarring as his steering towards the next labelled exit, running away from the words even as they’re coming out of his mouth. “Next town. We’ll stop. Cas, go with him, heal the person _immediately_ and wipe their memories. We don’t have time for him to detox right now.”

“Sam—”

“Just do it,” Sam snaps, and Cas glowers at him and stares out the window as the first signs of a small town break the monotany of the highway. He looks, for a good five minutes, like he’s going to yell back at Sam, the shifts in his expression constantly inching towards an outburst that Sam wishes he would just get on with. It never comes, which makes Sam feel even worse.

When Cas and Husk climb out of the car and walk down the street, Sam can finally focus on his heartbeat ricocheting against his ribcage; he closes his eyes and slows his breath until his body is forced to go along with it. Bit by bit his muscles relax, his jaw unclenches, his heart slows to a rate that’s only _slightly_ tachycardic; his mind follows, sort of, but the clarity that follows the panic is just as bad, for different reasons.

He climbs out of the car into the cold, boots crunching on salt-and-dirt mottled patches of snow in the parking lot. And then he punches the Impala. Not on the glass, but a sturdy part of the frame that doesn’t bend when his fist makes contact.

 _What happened to saving everyone?_ Sam thinks, wants to _scream_ but there’s someone on the other side of the parking lot who would hear him, more furious at himself than he’s been in a while. It’s barely been _months_ since he looked at Dean in the hospital and asked him _"When did we forget how to do this?"_

And now the version of himself that he wanted to be at his absolute lowest has shown up and they’re _stuck_ with him unless by some miracle, someone picks up the phone and announces they have a lead on Dean. The Other Sam is _dangerous_ , and composed, and seems eerily rational about the demon blood in a way Sam could never be. It’s Sam’s most aspirational shame, here in the flesh, and he’s sent Cas off to help him bleed an innocent person on the _slim_ chance that it will lead them to Dean, which isn’t even a sure thing. Right back to where they started, right back to where their problems always begin.

He punches the Impala again, and feels the skin split this time, bleeding and bruising.

Castiel and the Other Sam come back about an hour-and-a-half later, with a smudge of red on the corner of the human’s mouth and a scowl on the angel’s. There’s a plastic water bottle in the Other Sam's hand filled with dark red liquid, and bloodstains on Cas’s coat that he doesn’t offer any details on as he climbs back into the front seat.

“We’ll drive for another few hours,” Sam says, making the decision unilaterally, while Cas glowers and Husk stretches out in the backseat. “Then we’ll stop for the night. Unless we catch a lead that isn’t just following a feeling.” Blood drips from his knuckles onto his jeans, onto the floor of the Impala, and he presses down on the gas a little harder.

◎

"I will not share a room with him," Castiel announces as they walk to the motel’s front desk, the other man waiting in the car just outside. Sam sighs, but he doesn’t have any arguments against it, and he slides over a credit card in exchange for two room keys.

Once Cas and the Other Sam are situated in their respective rooms, Sam heads back out to where the Impala is parked, sits in the front seat, and calls every hunter he knows for the second time in a day. There’s a lot of apologies, a lot of promises to keep an eye out, an assurance from Jody that she’s pulling every string she can. He lets his phone fall onto the leather seat and sits out there a little longer to put off his stops at each of the motel rooms before he sleeps, stuck somewhere between avoidance and paralysis. 

Sam finally gets out of the car as the temperatures continue to drop and the metal chassis stops being enough insulation to make being out here in the winter night preferable to a motel bed, even if the other bed is occupied by someone who doesn’t particularly want to see him right now. As he shuts the door behind him, he rests a hand on the spot he’d punched earlier, runs his hand along it in an apology to the Impala that feels more cathartic than silly.

Sam knocks once on the Other Sam’s motel door, quietly, with no response. He knocks a little harder, then hears the sound of something getting breaking on the floor. Without waiting for a response, he pulls out his lockpick and has the door open in seconds, taking in the scene with eyes still wide from worry. The origin of the crashing noise is easy to spot. A lamp’s been knocked over, and the base is shattered on the threadbare maroon carpet, but that’s secondary to the sight of the Other Sam kneeling on the floor in front of a stranger, fingers curled into his hair and the stranger’s eyes distractedly glancing at the lamp he just elbowed to the ground before he looks up and sees Sam. 

“Christ,” Sam mutters, and turns on his heel before his eyes fully absorb the scene in front of him and it’s seared into his mind for good. He slams the motel door shut, leans up against the wall and stares out into the parking lot, taking deep breaths. _There’s no easy way to process seeing yourself sucking a stranger’s dick,_ he thinks, even when it’s not, well, you. 

The door opens less than a minute later, and Husk steps out, hair still mussed up, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and acting as if he hasn’t just left a stranger in the motel room.

“What’s up,” he says casually, and Sam glares at him. “You should’ve knocked,” he adds with a shrug. “You remember what it’s like without a soul.”

“I did knock. And I try not to think too much about what it was like to be without a soul,” Sam says, and the Other Sam smirks at that; it’s an unkind expression that makes Sam feel a little nauseous to see on his own face. An edge slips into his own voice. “I guess I assumed there’d be a _modicum_ of self-control given the current situation.” 

“Stop lying, you know that’s bullshit.” Sam opens his mouth to defend himself, but the sound of his own voice continues over him before he can get a word out, steady and cool and still escalating the situation much faster than Sam expected. “This isn’t _my_ brother we’re talking about. And even if it were, do you think I’d give a shit? We both know I wouldn’t. So if I’m cutting my blood intake by three-fourths in _addition_ to helping out your sorry ass, you better believe I’m still gonna have a quick fuck where I can find one to take the edge off things, and I just so happened to find one here.”

“You don’t have a cho—”

“You keep saying that,” the Husk says, and he steps in front of Sam, boxing him in against the motel wall. “Do you _really_ believe it? We both know that you couldn’t take me, and the sad sack of a wingless angel you’re fucking is a pretty far cry from the Castiel that _I_ remember.”

“What?” Sam gets out, trying not to lose sight of the bigger point here even as he tries not to stumble over his words in surprise; he doesn’t dignify the implication with a direct response.

“Last I remember of Castiel, he’d gone _way_ off the deep end, broke the wall in my—our—head. Then he broke the rest of the world, just for the hell of it. For some reason I can’t imagine this guy doing the same.” 

Now this— _this_ revelation is a genuine surprise to Sam. “Wait, you… you had your soul back?” he asks, too confused to stay angry, trying to make sure he’s phrasing it right. He’d just assumed that his soul had never made it out of the cage and back into the Other Sam, a possibility that was horrifying and nauseating to consider ( _and he hadn’t been able to avoid thinking about it because 200 years is nothing think of 600, a thousand, eternity, knowing nothing else forgetting everything else just a raw soul trapped down there everyone who could save you gone forgotten_ —), but one that explained where their worlds had split cleanly. 

“For a moment there, yeah.”

“And when the wall broke…?”

“I won the showdown in Sam Winchester’s grapefruit,” the Other Sam says, backs up a bit and taps the side of his head. “And I guess you won here.”

“What happened to—our—the…” Sam stumbles over his words for a second, trying to get the specifics right, like saying it properly will help it make more sense. _They don’t really matter_ , he realizes. “The soul you had.”

"Don’t know. Maybe it went to heaven. I just wanted it gone, didn't pay too much attention to what happened afterwards." He’s so flippant about it, and Sam’s shocked into remembering that without a soul, he just doesn’t care. He _can’t_ care.

“Why _are_ you helping?” Sam asks after a moment of thought, and notices with some relief that the intensity in Husk’s posture has melted away. He almost seems relaxed, and though Sam tries to remind himself that it's because there’s no soul and that's objectively bad, he's still struck by how self-assured the Other Sam seems. Their conversation has been full of expressions and inflections that seem deeply unfamiliar to Sam, except for in far-off memories, but this quiet confidence is somehow one of the strangest to see on his own face.

“Seems like the easiest way to find out how to get back to my world.”

“How do you figure?”

Husk shrugs. “Intuition. Or whatever memory-imprint-whatever of intuition I have without a soul. I don’t know anybody here. You’re annoying, the angel seems incompetent, but you still seem like the best bet I have at the moment.”

“What’s it like?” Sam asks, and it’s such a banal question in the middle of a conversation that’s anything that he almost feels silly for asking, especially as an immediate response to being insulted. “Your world. Is it the same?”

“No, it’s a shithole. But I have power there. Not quite the ‘Boy King of Hell’ crap people wouldn’t shut up about ages ago, but… respect.” The Other Sam finally steps fully out of Sam’s personal space, apparently done trying to intimidate him, and turns to look out across the darkened motel parking lot. If Sam thought that he was capable of feeling anything close to it, he’d almost describe the expression on his face as wistful, even as his tone remains discomforting and clinical. He briefly wonders if Husk is an unfair moniker to give to the other him, even restricted to his own thoughts. “I know you’d kill me if I stayed here. I won’t stop what I’m doing with the demon blood, I like how it makes me feel, makes me more whole. It makes me a better hunter. And against the Leviathan, any advantage matters.”

“Leviathan?” Sam echoes. “We haven't seen any of those outside of Purgatory in years.”

“Lucky you. I deal with them on days ending with y." He doesn’t elaborate, and though Sam can tell the conversation is being drawn to a close, and he’s been talking to the Other Sam for too long anyways, he has to bite his tongue to stop his curiosity from leading into another wave of questions. “Anyways, this has been _great_ , and I can tell you all about the Leviathan your good friend Castiel let out into my world later, but I need to get back to my guest,” Husk says, and Sam’s eyebrows shoot up. _I guess we_ have _been in front of the door this whole time_ , he realizes, so there’s no way the man could have left, but it’s still a mild shock to remember that there’s still a man fresh off his orgasm in the room behind them.

“How are you going to explain away the identical stranger who just interrupted you?”

“Obviously you’re my twin.”

“Right,” Sam says, a little sheepish, and steps away from the door. “I know you don’t sleep but, uh, try to be... ready by five. At the latest. I want to leave early." _But wanted to make sure Cas got rest,_ he almost adds, which is true, but the angel’s recovery is not a topic he wants to open up anywhere near the rest of this conversation.

The Other Sam nods in acknowledgement, turns to walk back into the room, then stops with his hand resting on the door knob, looks back at Sam. “Have you really not fucked a man since you were me?”

“I haven’t fucked many people, period, since I was you,” Sam responds without thinking, unsure of why he’s admitting this to his counterpart. The confession makes him feel vulnerable enough that he braces himself for laughter or a smirk from the Other Sam, but neither comes. Instead, he just tilts his head a bit, thinking, and it’s somehow more disarming than if he'd jeered at Sam’s admittance.

“Well,” he says, and opens the door. “Good luck.”

◎

Sam lets himself back into the other motel room and brushes his teeth silently, fluffs the paper-thin pillow up the best he can and lays down. He doesn’t close his eyes when he rests his head on it. He looks across the room at where Cas is sitting on the other bed, focused on the motel television. The angel looks physically better now, something Sam’s been carefully keeping an eye on the past few weeks, save for the distraction of the past few days. But since the last night Cas spent in Sam’s room any remnants of red around his irises have faded out, the dark circles under his eyes have slowly lightened. He's struck by a sudden pall of guilt that the emotional improvements he's seen in the angel could have been undone by what happened earlier that day.

“Are you concerned at all about the possibility of him running off without supervision?” Castiel asks, and his voice belies the pretty obvious fact that he’s actually mad about more than just Sam leaving the other man unsupervised. And in a weird way, that’s a relief. Cas just seems mad, and understandably so, but not anxious or on edge or inches away from catatonic dissociation or unlike himself; Sam will take mad over ‘post-attack dog spell distress’ any day.

“He, uh,” Sam starts, trying to phrase it delicately enough that Cas gets the point but it spares both of them from the embarrassment of lingering on the topic too long. “Has company. I don’t think he’s going anywhere.”

“I dislike him,” Cas says simply, and Sam almost opens his mouth to agree, but he’s not sure he can in the way Cas really wants him too; he can at least offer the angel the dignity of not lying. The Sam a few rooms down is not a good person, he’s not _likeable_ , but Sam _understands_ him, which isn’t something that’s pleasant to realize, but is the truth. He was surprised at his own response to Husk’s question about his sex life, it’s just as surprising he was asked in the first place, suggesting a kind of curiosity and cordiality that he wasn’t prepared for. It’s not warmth, but it’s something more than uneasiness and distrust.

“I’m sorry,” Sam says, after a few minutes have passed, pushing himself back up to a sitting position and turning towards the bed Cas is sitting on. “For making you deal with the blood. That we have to deal with it at all,” he adds, and the guilt is acid in his throat. He’s not sure what he feels guiltiest about, actually: the person he gave Cas and Husk permission to steal blood from, the hour that they’ll always be missing, pushing Castiel into dealing with it in the first place, the brief break they're taking from searching for Dean. All of it? It blends together. “I remembered my withdrawals, and you know, I don’t think about it normally, and with Dean missing and everything going on I panicked, and. I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

“You were right that we couldn’t wait for him to detox. I suspect if Dean were here, he would have given his approval for that strategy as well," Cas says, and his voice has softened a bit, though he stubbornly stares at the screen and not at Sam, the bright square reflecting in his blue eyes.

“Yeah, because that’s _always_ a sure sign that something’s a good idea,” Sam says with half of a dry smile, then immediately feels bad about it and frowns, more at himself than anything else. He trusts Husk enough to believe that Dean isn't dead—which is a risk, but what other choice do they have?—but he’s not sure he believes it enough to feel okay joking about his brother.

“He told me that had his soul back,” Sam says, expecting Castiel to be even a _little_ surprised by this information. A slight grimace crosses the angel's face, fast enough to miss if you blink. Sam catches it.

“I know,” Cas replies, and for a moment, the only other sign of a changing level of comfort with the conversation is the way his fingers tighten around the TV remote. “He told me in no uncertain terms last night what he thought of me for the events of that year.” Something in that finally makes him look over at Sam, and though he leaves the infomercial playing, he finally turns to face Sam, shifting to the edge of his bed so their knees are mere inches apart, faces not much further. “An opinion that I cannot truly fault him for, given that I am still sometimes surprised that you and Dean forgave me for it.”

“You came when I prayed,” Sam says gently, leaving enough of a question in his explanation for Castiel to reply as much or as little as he wants. It’s a fraction of the full list of reasons Cas deserved his forgiveness—his own list of mistakes that Cas forgave _him_ for, the pain he took on to save Sam, the way Sam knows that at his core Cas thought he was doing the right thing, and how that's an emotion he knows _all_ too well—but he leaves it at that for now, no need to complicate the situation even more.

“You forced me to confront the realization that I needed help,” Cas says, and shoots Sam a look that cuts to the hunter’s bones, surprisingly accusatory and intense. But not cold, though Sam couldn’t blame him if he had still been mad enough to be cruel about it. “A lesson you could have used the four years since then to learn.”

“What?” Cas nods down at Sam’s raw knuckles, missing patches of skin and barely scabbed over. Sam dutifully holds them out, but can’t help but be a little amused at Cas’s deflection tactics. “You didn’t _offer_ to heal them.”

"I was mad," Cas replies simply, and Sam laughs with a gentle huff of an exhale, but he takes Sam’s hand in his own. He brushes his other hand over the injury, the white glow from his palm briefly overtaking the TV as the brightest light in the room as Sam's skin pulls back together and the pain ebbs away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is 1. longer than i expected 2. much more talking and character based than expected! i started out with this fic by breaking rule #1 of multichapter fics: know where you're going with it lol. however after writing it i do kind of have a feeling where its headed and how many more chapters it will be, so we're getting somewhere!
> 
> read over by sophie/pippuri, who was also very patient bc i kept messaging her like "im done with the chapter" "wait actually no im not"
> 
> i love comments and try my best to reply to all of them! or come follow me at @tube_ebooks on twitter if you want to see me livetweet s2 combined with complaining about my job

**Author's Note:**

> as always, HUGE thanks to sophie (ao3 user pippuri, read her fic!) for helping me talk through certain parts of this, i would absolutely still be stuck on the first 200 words without her help
> 
> the title is inspired by weights & measures by dry the river, a lyric that i twisted to mean the exact opposite of what they sing. sorry dry the river! your music is good!
> 
> i'm so excited to try something weird and multi-chapter! as of right now i'm not entirely sure how long it'll end up - 4, 5 chapters maybe? i have the majority of the second chapter written and a loose idea of the rest of it but i would LOVE comments on this to keep me motivated bc multichapter stories terrify me lmao.
> 
> always and forever, tube_ebooks on twitter


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